Shinobi and Mercenaries
by XanonymousXX
Summary: When a stalemate between the two teams has lasted for too long, Helen brings in some outside help- Shinobi from Konohagakure and the Akatsuki. When Kakashi is forced to work with Tobi Uchiha and Sasori, with Gai, Deidara and Itachi on the opposing team, how will it end up? No slash.


A/N: Thanks for deciding to read my fic. This is my first crossover and hope the characters weren't too OOC. I'll try my best to improve the quality of my work. Thank you. Also, anonymous reviews are accepted! Isn't that great?

Main characters: Hatake Kakashi;Uchiha Tobi; Sasori of The Red Sand; TF2 Mercenaries (blu)

Supporting characters: Maito Gai; Deidara; Uchiha Itachi; TF2 Characters (Red)

Okay, so some of you may be wondering how do the six shinobi still equalize the teams, so I've decided to add in a short note. Kakashi vs. Gai (eternal rivals), Tobi vs. Itachi (real Uchiha's and masters of the Sharingan), Deidara vs. Sasori. (Paired up while in the Akatsuki) With that, I thank you for your attention and hope you enjoy the fic.

* * *

Kakashi stared at the hokage in disbelief. He was going on an S-ranked mission with members of the Akatsuki? That was unheard of! They should be brought in and sentenced, not working with Konoha ninja.

Before he could open his mouth to protest, Tsunade spoke, "It is our client's wish to hire two Konoha shinobi. She made it especially clear that no one was to know about the Akatsuki's involvement, and that our past relationships with them should not affect the mission. She is willing to pay us a great deal of money for this mission."

"But-"

"No 'buts', Hatake. Here are the mission scrolls. Now memorize them, destroy them, and head off. Pack enough weapons to last at least a year. And your ANBU gear, just in case. No objections, that's an order. A man, known as "Engineer", will meet you at the rendezvous point with equipment. Good luck."

Realizing that his was a lost cause, Kakashi obediently bowed and left the office after picking up the scrolls on Tsunade's desk.

He entered his sparsely furnished apartment and started to read the scrolls. The further he read, the more he didn't like the mission.

Kakashi Hatake

Mission rank: S  
Duration of Mission: Approximately three years  
Teammates: Maito Gai (Jounin)  
cover story: N/A  
name of client: _Builders League United _(respond to_ 'Helen'_)_  
_Rendezvous point: Forty miles due East of Land of Iron  
Mission summary: No information given  
additional information: Do not answer unless questioned. Do not make contact with teammate Maito Gai and show no signs of recognition.

underneath the standard mission statements, there was a small handwritten note.

_Kakashi, don't let Gai do anything too stupid. -Tsunade_

Kakashi smiled a bit. Just like Tsunade.

Sighing, he performed a miniature Katon and burnt the scroll to a crisp before hurriedly packing all his kunai, shuriken, clothes, his katana, and his ANBU uniform. Last of all, he picked up his mask.

Faceless, emotionless. That's what ANBU were supposed to be. And efficient too. That was the most important.

As Kakashi cast one last look at his room, his eyes landed on the two framed photographs placed on his bedside. One of his old team, Team Minato, and his own, Team Seven. Looking more carefully at the official photo of Team Minato, he realized how happy everyone was. Everyone, except him. Those had been the happiest days of his life, too bad he had been too much of a fool to realize it. Kakashi closed his eyes for a moment, remembering the old days.

Against his better judgement, Kakashi gently put both his team's photo into his backpack.

Attempting to suppress the memories of why he had joined the ANBU in the first place, Kakashi picked up his bag and off to the Land of Iron, without stopping by Gai's house first. He had undoubtedly already set off, eager to beat his eternal rival in another undeclared, useless competition.

"Well now, I can't let him win now can I? If I did lose, Gai will never let it go." Kakashi smirked, thinking of Gai's face when he saw him at the meeting point first.

Kakashi nearly missed a step and stumbled when he remembered another eternally happy-go-lucky teammate he had once had.

_Obito._

_He had failed Obito. He had failed Rin._

Kakashi clenched his teeth and sped up. He would not fail Gai. _Not this time._

Kakashi stopped roughly five hundred meters from the rendezvous point. He stayed high up in a tree and observed the shack that they were supposed to be meeting at.

It was one of the strangest shacks Kakashi had ever seen. Half of it was roughly painted blood red, while the other half was painted sky blue. The words 'RED' and 'BLU' were painted on the walls of the shack. It had no windows.

Now, that was very suspicious. Normally, clients' houses had huge windows. Fresh air and all that.

Suddenly, he noticed someone running towards him. He sensed the person's charkra signature and realised that it was Gai. He turned around just in time to see a flash of green barreling towards him.

Gai was greeted by a Kakashi eye- smile. He stopped merely feet away from him, mouth agape.

"How... how did you... left early...you...what?!" Gai's disbelief led to his words being all jumbled up. Kakashi smiled at him while signalling him to hide himself. Gai obliged, bending down beside Kakashi.

"Read the mission scroll, huh? Can't believe that we're supposed to work with_ them_." Gai pulled a scroll out of his backpack and frowned, comparing it to Kakashi's.

"It says here that I'm contracted to 'Reliable Excavation Demolition' and you're contracted to 'Builders League United'. In that case, why were we told to meet at the same place? And what's with the weird shack? And wh-" Kakashi clamped his hand over Gai's mouth to stop his rambling as the door to the RED side of the building opened and Itachi, yes, Itachi Uchiha, mass murderer, came out and looked around.

His eyes settled over kakashi and Gai's hiding spot. He stared at them for quite a bit before his mouth moved. Kakashi didn't even need his sharingan to see what he was he was saying: Hurry up.

Gai frowned, muttering, "You think he's the only one we're working with?" Kakashi shrugged and waited for Itachi to move back into the house before leaping off his perch and landing perfectly on the ground beside the door of the shack.

Kakashi turned to Gai, saying, "I wonder what we're supposed to do. It's not often a client doesn't provide any information."

Gai nodded and, extracting his nunchucks from his backpack, opened the door to RED, casually saying over his shoulder, "Don't die now. This is the most youthful competition yet! And also, finding an eternal rival is hard."

Kakashi nodded and entered the door on the other end of the shack, taking a deep breath to steady himself before opening the door.

The moment Kakashi entered, he could not help but let out a small gasp. Tobi, that's right, Tobi the masked man, was staring back at him. Tobi's sharingan awakened, and tomoe spun slowly, analysing Kakashi's features. His body language, facial expressions and every other miniature, easily overlooked detail. Kakashi noticed how he angled his head ever so slightly away from the Engineer.

Beside him, there was a young boy with blood-red hair and bright, brown eyes.

_Red hair. Kushina. Nine-tails._

"No. he's a man." Kakashi corrected himself. The man's posture, despite his youthful face, clearly said so. Kakashi flipped through his mental list of wanted Akatsuki members but couldn't place the man's face.

"I'm Sasori of the Red Sand, Kakashi-san." Sasori looked smug that Kakashi had failed to recognized him.

kakashi, temporarily forgetting bis mission orders, narrowed his eyes and said, "Who else from the Akatsuki is on Ga-" Kakashi unfinished question remained unanswered as Tobi threw a scroll at him, which he caught deftly and proceeded to read.

_Idiot!_

The scroll had said to show no signs of recognition! Kakashi mentally slapped himself. How had he forgotten?

It was almost identical to his own mission scroll, except for a few minor changes. However, in the place of the note Tsunade had written, there was one written by Tobi himself: Do not show sharingan unless necessary. I don't trust them.

Indeed, Tobi's words had at least some truth to them. The Engineer's baggy overalls could easily conceal a variety of weapons, including kunai or small daggers.

Looking extremely flustered, the Engineer said, "Well now, since we're all here, how about we set off?"

Kakashi frowned. What language was this man speaking?

Slapping a hand to his forehead, the Engineer handed a collar-like object to Kakashi, gesturing for Tobi to explain

Slightly irritated, Tobi impatiently pulled down the collar part to reveal the collar-like thing clamped around his neck, like a dog's collar.

It was, however, an unnecessary movement as Kakashi had already figured it out and was making the final adjustments to his 'collar'. Which was, in reality, a translator which not only allowed the user to understand English, but read and speak it too.

"Ahem... Now can you understand me?" The Engineer, slightly embarrassed, asked after Kakashi had finished meddling with his translator and nodded, hand already straying to his kunai pouch, ready to sink one into the Engineer's neck at any moment.

Desperately resisting the urge to run, the Engineer continued, "Right then. This thing here is a teleporter." He launched in a very detailed and technical report about how the teleporter worked and what they had to do, making exaggerated hand movements to emphasis his point.

"Your inability to effectively say what you mean coupled with Kakashi-san's late arrival has caused us to be late. I do not like keeping people waiting." Sasori's interruption caused Engineer to stop mid-explanation, eyes wide and face slightly flushed with embarrassment.

"Ahem… Right then. So I'm guessing y'all more or less know what happens. Your molecules will be broken down and reassembled at the other end. Your genetic signatures have already been coded. So, uh... Mister..."

"Kakashi Hatake"

Kakashi had clearly said "Hatake Kakashi", not "Kakashi hatake". Who in their right mind put their first name, well, first?

"Right. Mister Kakashi. How about you go first?" The Engineer, looking between the three of them, decided that Kakashi would be the least likely to kill him in his sleep if he was asked to go first, though it was a narrow decision. Although, come to think of it, these three men were somehow more scary than the whole opposing team. And, judging from the way Kakashi was glaring at him, he had better set up extra defenses in his room tonight.

Kakashi hesistated only slightly before stepping onto the platform and saw the world melt around him, before reappearing in _another _blue and grey room. Kakashi took less than a second to find his center and stepped off the exit.

Only to be met by an angry Soldier.

"YOU ARE THE NEW RECRUITS ARE YOU NOT?! I AM ALREADY DISAPPOINTED BY YOUR UNFIT STATURE. YOU MEN WILL FALL LIKE THE NAZIS DID TO AMERICA!" Kakashi, caught off guard, instinctively hurled a kunai at the Soldier's forehead and, with quiet satisfaction, watched the Soldier's limp body fall to the ground lifeless as Tobi and Sasori stepped off the teleporter.

Sasori raised one immaculately trimmed eyebrow at the sight of the Soldier's dead body.

"He snuck up on me and yelled in my ear about being a lousy shinobi. I have pride." Kakashi shrugged and Sasori let the matter drop.

It was at that moment that a newly-respawned Soldier reappeared at the doorway to the intelligence room. Raising his finger, he pointedly said, "I take that back."

Kakashi recovered from the shock of seeing someone dead come back to life first and lunged forward, poking the Soldier while muttering, "Edo Tensei. Edo tensei must be..."

"WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU"RE DOING?! YOU ARE TOUCHING THE FLESH AND BLOOD OF A TRUE AMERICAN! DID YOUR MOTHER NOT TEACH YOU TO RESPECT AMERICA?! YOU SC-" Kakashi took a surprised step back but the Engineer tackled the Soldier to the ground and clamped a hand over his mouth before he could even reach for his kunai. Amazing.

"Ah... heh heh heh... Ignore Soldier here. He's not right in his head." The Engineer made an attempt to lighten the mood. Kakashi however, had no time to digest this as his extra sensitive ears picked up footsteps coming towards the room, and joined Tobi and Sasori in grabbing the first weapon from their bags.

As the first head poked around the corner, Sasori threw a poisoned dart towards the figure, which yelped and promptly retracted its head, with Sasori's dart exactly where his head was a moment ago, its poison slowly dripping down. Sasori muttered a curse.

Climbing off the winded Soldier, the Engineer wiped his hands on his overalls and said, "Don't worry guys, they're mostly harmless, I think..."

One by one, the members of Builders League United shuffled into the Intelligence of Teufort, Scout most reluctantly, if having to be dragged in by the Demoman was any indication. All heads were turned to the Engineer for introductions. The Engineer ruefully rubbed the back of his head and said, after pausing to think for awhile, "Uhh... Guys, this is Sasori of the Red Sand, Tobi and Kakashi Hatake"

. The shinobi inclined their head slighyly as their names were called.

"And uh... these guys are the people you'll be working with. Scout, Medic, Sniper, Heavy, Demoman, Spy, Soldier, me, Engineer and Pyro." The mercenaries, too, inclined their heads. Well, except for Scout, who was still brooding about the poisoned dart incident and refused to move from his corner.

Kakashi and Tobi simultaniously cocked their heads to the side. A fully masked man huh? Well, they could live with that. At least one person wasn't going to question then on their mask. As long as the Pyro stood by those boundaries, they might just become..._ Friends._ Or, at least very good accomplices.

"Mmph mph mmmph mph mph mmmmph?" The shinobi's translation collars trnaslated the Pyro's muffled attempts at speech to very low, gravelly, barely recognizable japanese. His Mmphs had translated to "May I show you to your rooms?"

Well well... Apparently thr YPro had manners, a rarity among most shinobi. Most of them were too tired out to bother with introductions, manners, and things of the like.

Picking up their extremely heavy bags, the shinobi silently followed after the Pyro. (He had offered to help, but they had declined, worried that their weapons/personal items/secrets might be damaged or fall out)

As the group of four were making their way to the door of the intelligence room, the medic called out after them, "Herr Pyro! Remember to bring them down to my surgery after zhey have settled in. I have to install ze respawn chip and re-calibrate zheir hearts to match the ubergun's."

two more cheery 'mmphs mmphs' later, the Pyro and the shinobi disappeared around the corner. The moment they disappeared, the remaining mercenaries broke into excited chatter.

"Did'ja see their weird-ass masks?!"

"A poisoned dart, mate! What the hell was he tryin' ta do?!"

"I cannot vait to install ze respawn chip in them. It has been so long..."

"Vell, zhey cannot be any more idiotic zhan ze rest of you, non?"

"ANTI-AMERICANS I TELL YOU. THEY WILL KILL ALL OF US PATRIOTS IN OUR SLEEP. QUICK, GO GET THE LEADER OF THE MOLE PEOPLE TO DIG TRAPS FOR HIM!"

"Those lads canna be all bad, now can they?"

The many voices trying to gain dominance over one another gave the Engineer a headache. He rubbed the bridge of his nose and sighed.

"Now... Will y'all calm down?" His quiet Texan nature was overcome bv the fact that his team were complete idiots and the migraine threatening to overwhelm him.

"I. Said. _QUIET!_"

The mercenaries were shocked into silence by the Engineer's sudden outburst. Red-faced and panting, he glared at them all in turn.

The Scout, however, was not cowed and openly snapped his fingers as an idea hit him.

"I got it I got it I got it! We can raid their rooms while they're recovering from the surgery fo-"

"Ze respawn installation does not _require_ any periods of rest!" The Medic was clearly indignant that someone thought that his surgery required any periods of..._ Rest  
_

"Yeah, yeah. BUT, 'cos you're the doctah, you can just_ tell _them that, can't ya?" Getting a reluctant nod from a very irked Medic, he continued with a smug grin on his face that made the Medic just want to punch him, "So yeah. We can staht with that Sasori guy. Wonder what he has in his bag..."

The Scout's little speech trailed off into nothing as he started to think about what Sasori might have in his huge bag. The other mercenaries were equally silent, stunned by the fact that the Scout had had an idea, a good idea, even.

Finally getting his voice back, the Engineer cleared his throat and said, "Well then, all those in favour of raiding their room

s, say 'I'"

Seven 'I's' echoed the Engineer's own. The Spy was nowhere to be seen. He had stalked off after realizing that nobody was paying attention to him.

The Engineer grinned.

"Well then, I guess we're raiding their rooms then."

Kakshi surveyed his room with mild distaste. It was simple, practical. Butit was... so _blue_. Blue was supposed to be a calming colour right? Well, if how every interrogation room he had ever been in had been painted blue, with red splattered on the walls had been any indication, then it was most definitely _not_ a calming colour. Blue suffocated people. It reminded them of the sky, of freedom.

Directly in front of where he was standing at the doorway to his room, opposite him was a single bed with a beside lamp and table. Next to the door, a bookcase was filled with..._Japanese scripture? _Interesting. He could check them out later.

About a meter or two directly in front of the bed, there was a door to what Kakashi supposed led to the bathroom. Next to the door, there was a nice, solid oak desk. Next to the bookcase, crammed in a corner, a dresser stood proudly. A quick tour of the bathroom showed that it contained no more than a sink, toilet and a bathtub.

Kakashi sighed and started unpacking. He put away all his clothes, left his mask and katana on the top of his dresser, placed the various weapons he had brought with him neatly in his desk's drawers. He was surprised at the fact that there was enough space to place all of them. Kakashi delicately placed all his Icha Icha books on one of the few empty shelves left.

Finally, Kakashi removed a scroll from one of the pockets in his vest. He bit his thumb and ran his bleeding finger over the rough paper of the scroll. With a flick of his wrist, the scroll rolled up and he clasped the scroll in his two hands. Performing intricate hand seals that he had been through so many times, he thought about all his ninken. If there were any beings he could trust, it was a dog.

Finally, he slammed the scroll into the ground and watched as black, spider-like lines exploded from the scroll and spread out on the floor. With a soft poof, his pack of eight ninken appeared.

"Yo." Pakkun lazily raised a paw in greeting as the he and the rest of the ninken eagerly started sniffing around the room. Pakkun stared at Kakashi, "what's with all the blue? It hurts my eyes. Where are we?" Kakashi was slightly relieved that he wasn't the only one disturbed by the amount of blue.

"It's a long-term mission. I'm stuck here for three years and I've got some Akatsuki members as teammates, and I don't trust the others I was sent to work with either. I need you guys to stand guard here. Apparently they have something called 'respawn' which allows them to come back to life. I witnessed it myself. If they come inside this room, kill them. Do not hold back." True, Kakashi was being paranoid, but those people who he was working with were so... So... _Suspicious._

"Got it. See ya soon." Feeling more reassured, Kakashi closed his room door and went down the hallway.


End file.
